Скачать или смотреть Sylvia Plath Interview with Peter Orr of the British Council - The Spoken Word

A reading and an interview with Peter Orr, London, 30 October 1962.

The voice of Plath comes at us from the past in recordings made as early as 1960, and we can hear even then the distinctive, although obviously
different, voices of the poet that have made previously available recordings of her work memorable. Her accent is defining, and no doubt contributes to the ways in which we interpret her work.

In an interview with Peter Orr in 1962, Plath said that "my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk…"; yet it is clear in listening to the interviews with Plath that by l960 or 1961—even earlier, perhaps— that her speaking voice had become somewhat of an amalgam of her Boston accent with British pronunciations of some words and phrases (168).

More specifically, Plath's accent may be American in a general sense, but her Boston or New England accents still surface in both readings and interviews, for example, in words such as "parts," "arts," and "heart," and pronounced by Plath as "pahts," "ahts," and "haht," respectively.

In addition to the valuable interview, The Spoken Word recording includes ten poems by Plath, along with her brief introductions to several of the poems.